


The TV Car

by weedle_writes_gay_stuff



Category: Infinity Train (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Callback, Oneshot, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 05:33:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29379990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weedle_writes_gay_stuff/pseuds/weedle_writes_gay_stuff
Summary: While continuing their journey through the train together, Amelia and Hazel come across a car that looks extremely inviting, but soon discover a sinister secret behind its benign exterior. A little oneshot set after the events of Book 3.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	The TV Car

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing an Infinity Train fic! To be honest, even though I don’t post about it much, this show is one of my favourites and I’ve really wanted to try doing a oneshot for it, but never had any ideas until this one kinda randomly came to me. This is based on the status quo of the end of Book 3, at least for Amelia and Hazel, so there’ll be spoilers for basically the whole show as of this writing!

Hazel winced as she heard the deafening horn of the train and the loud, endless clatter of its engines, and watched the endless desert stretch out before them beyond the little walkway she and Amelia were settled on. She clung to the old lady’s hand tightly, desperately, afraid to even look at their hands in case she was turning into a turtle again.

Amelia looked down at her, leading her across the walkway, noticing that Hazel could barely bring herself to make eye contact with her. She didn’t seem to be taking her denizen form right now, though Amelia noticed her complexion looked slightly more green-tinged than the human skin tone Hazel usually had. “Are you OK?” she asked, her voice drowned out by the loud chunter of the train. “I said, are you OK?” she repeated, more sternly than she meant it to.

Hazel looked up at her guiltily. “I’m scared,” she admitted. Her fingernails seemed to bite into Amelia’s skin, just to make her aware the girl seemed to be losing her grip on her human form.

“Well, I’m here to keep you safe,” Amelia replied flatly. This did not seem to improve Hazel’s mood as the two of them came to the doorway into the next car. Amelia sighed as she noticed Hazel’s hesitation, but bent down and spoke a bit more softly. “Listen, whatever’s in that car, I’m sure we can deal with it together. For all we know, it might be something harmless or fun!”

“I guess…” Hazel nodded, still not making eye contact.

“Maybe it’s a Car Car?” Amelia joked. “We go in there, and then to get through it we have to win a drag race against living cars or something!” Hazel giggled a little at that, finally seeming to lighten up, both figuratively and literally as the green tinge faded from her skin. Amelia made a mental note of that: Hazel’s control over her denizen and human forms clearly fluctuated with her mood.

With that, Amelia opened the car’s door, the symbol on it rotating before it vanished and left the doorway clear for them to enter. 

Walking inside, the two saw what appeared to be a plush, if somewhat dated, living room, complete with bay windows, a brown three-seater couch and a CRT TV. “What’s this?” Hazel asked, looking around confusedly.

“It’s a sitting room. Humans- well, humans off the train…” Amelia tripped over her words, drawing attention to her distinction like if she’d said something bigoted without realizing until it was too late. She avoided looking at Hazel as she elaborated, trying not to sound so condescending again. “…erm, when they get time at home, they spend a lot of the time here.”

“Sitting?” Hazel wondered. “Doesn’t it get boring?” Wanting to test it out for herself, she went to sit on the couch. Amelia didn’t stop her, particularly with how happy she seemed, sitting comfortably on it, sinking into one of the seats and kicking her legs as she rested.

“Well, usually people have things to pass the time while they sit,” Amelia elaborated, walking over to join her. “They read books, play games, watch TV…” Hazel looked blankly at her, a slight frown on her face. It was slowly dawning on Amelia that stuff like what she was doing at the moment drilled it home for Hazel how different she was to ‘normal’ humans, so she decided to change her track. “We could watch TV if you like.”

“Really?” Hazel’s eyes lit up at that.

“Yeah! That thing across the room from us is a TV. I’ll just see if I can switch it on!” Amelia got up and pressed the on button. A familiar hiss accompanied its activation- this TV, she noticed, was the exact same kind as Alrick had had when they were going out. 

She tried to blot it out of her mind, grabbing the remote before going back to sit down with Hazel.

Hazel’s eyes narrowed sceptically as static patterns danced across the screen. “Do you just watch this?” she wondered aloud.

Amelia chuckled at the suggestion, but stopped when she saw Hazel’s sad estranged expression had returned. “No, it’s just on the wrong channel. There’s probably something on another channel.” She pressed 1 on the remote, but instead of the channel changing, a familiar round figure popped up in the screen. Recognizing it, Amelia rolled her eyes.

“Hello!” it said excitably. “You pressed One for technical support, so here I am!”

“I pressed One because I assumed channel 1 would have something on,” Amelia corrected dryly.

Switching from his upbeat Glad-One voice to his dour Sad-One voice, the robot replied snarkily, “Well, if you don’t want technical support, there’s a great documentary on static playing right now.”

Amelia groaned. “Fine, do what you have to.”

“Thank you, madam!” Glad-One chirped, setting to work. “We’ll have this working faster than you can say ‘we hope you enjoy the feature presentation, brought to you by-’” Suddenly, the static vanished and a programme had begun. “See? I was right! Enjoy your evening’s entertainment!” the eager robot said.

“This segment is rated PG, all young children must be accompanied by an adult,” Sad-One added, and One-One ducked down out of the screen and back into the train’s workings somewhere as the programme’s titles ended.

What unfolded on screen was, at first, very confusing to Amelia. A family of purple gorillas, all of whom seemed to have brass instruments on their shoulders, were gathered in a nest, laughing and playing happily. Was this a nature programme about a jungle car or something?

But then she noticed something. Hazel looked mortified, and she quickly lost control of her form, her turtle’s snout and shell rapidly reappearing as she started to cry. “Hazel? Hazel, what’s wrong?” she asked.

“That’s Tuba!” Hazel sobbed. “She was my friend, and she’s dead now!” Amelia offered her a hug, and in desperation she took it, crying into her shoulder.

Amelia picked up the remote to try and turn the TV off, and Tuba seemed to scowl at her through the screen. She reached out, her arm entering the sitting room and pulling her and Hazel into the TV, both of them screaming.

A few moments later, they came to, and looking up, both of them gasped as they saw a world of static around them. From the static arose a giant Tuba, who stared down at both of them with fury in her eyes. Hazel hid behind Amelia, peering out from behind her.  
“I can still see you, Hazel,” Tuba growled. “Don’t try and hide from me after what you let happen to me!”

“I’m sorry!” Hazel sniffled, looking away from her friend. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’M SORRY!” Amelia reached down awkwardly and stroked her hair, trying to comfort her without much luck.

“Sorry won’t bring me back,” said Tuba. “You might know now that Simon and Grace couldn’t be trusted, but you didn’t listen to me when I told you back when we met them. If you had, I’d still be alive! You were like a daughter to me, and you let them kill me!”

Hazel could barely come up with any reply or look at Tuba, overcome with guilt and sadness. “Tuba… please…” was all she could get out between sobbing.

“Leave her alone!” Amelia yelled at Tuba. “I don’t know who you are, but you don’t have the right to tell a child such awful things! You can’t blame Hazel for trusting cruel people if you never taught her to know not to!”

Tuba smiled menacingly. “That’s very rich coming from you, Conductor.” Suddenly Tuba’s form faded to static. It became apparent that this thing wasn’t really Tuba, but some bizarre static-based denizen that lived in the TV, and it rearranged itself into a mess of wires with a haunting white mask. Hazel looked up at it, and even though the figure wasn’t familiar, it was still scary to her.

Amelia, meanwhile, was just as shocked as Hazel had been just before. “You- you know that’s not who I am…” she protested.

The voice that came from the shapeshifting denizen was a distorted mix of Amelia’s and a sinister-sounding man’s voices. “Oh, but you were,” it retorted. “You know how many people you hurt on this train, the consequences you caused. One of them is standing right behind your leg, even.” Hazel ducked out of the denizen’s view, wishing she wasn’t still in her turtle form and could pretend she was just a human.

“Just because I hurt people doesn’t mean I can’t try and help them!” Amelia said insistently. She looked over her shoulder at Hazel, whose expression looked confused and fearful.

The denizen laughed in the Conductor’s distorted voice. “You’re so arrogant,” it declared. “Think how many people need to be distant from you, because of what you did. You can’t just try and fix everything you broke. You don’t deserve another chance! After all, you might just end up hurting them again!”

Amelia blinked through tears at its insinuations. “Maybe you’re right that I can’t fix everything I broke,” she admitted. “But some things, I can fix.” Looking down at Hazel, she added, “And I want to fix them. Maybe someone else can come and pick up the pieces of what I broke, while I’m fixing what I can.”

At this, the denizen exploded. “Neither of you knows you won’t just break even more things!” it yelled. “You should just sit down, keep yourselves away from people! That’s the only way you won’t get anyone hurt!”

But Amelia and Hazel were ignoring its ranting now. Amelia asked Hazel softly, “Do you trust me? I can trust you if you do.”

Hazel looked the old lady in the eyes and answered, “Yeah. I guess we’re kinda the same.”

And with that, Amelia picked up the TV remote she had been holding when they came into this dimension, pointed it at the denizen and pressed the Off button. The static world around them vanished, and everything went black.

A moment later, they were sat back on the sofa, and a loud beep was playing from the TV, which had a test card playing on it. Covering her ears, Hazel asked, “What’s going on?”

“I didn’t realize TVs still have closedowns,” Amelia chuckled to herself, getting up and switching it off.

Hazel said softly, “I don’t think I like TV.”

“They’re not usually anything like that, don’t worry,” Amelia replied. Offering her hand to Hazel, the girl eagerly took it, and the two got up from the sofa, heading for the door at the far end of the car.

It was at this point Amelia noticed Hazel was still in her turtle form. “Um, Hazel?” she asked quietly.  
“Yeah?”  
“Can I do something to cheer you up?”  
Hazel looked confused. “What’s that?”  
“Oh, I meant if there’s anything you used to do with Tuba, I’d like it if I could do it with you to make you feel better,” Amelia clarified.  
Smiling shyly, Hazel replied, “I guess there is one thing…”

Amelia noticed Hazel’s sharp turtle hand was no longer digging into her palm, and smiled. “Tell me.”

“Well, there was this lullaby. She’d sing one part, and I’d sing the other. Do you wanna sing her part?” offered Hazel.  
“Of course!” Amelia replied.  
“OK, her part goes, ‘Don’t be a worry baby, no need to hurry baby, when you’re with me…’” Hazel sang quietly.  
Amelia cleared her throat, hoping her lack of singing talent compared to the musical gorilla Hazel used to travel with wouldn’t be too disappointing. “Don’t be a worry baby, no need to hurry baby, when you’re with me…” she repeated.  
She was satisfied to feel the texture of Hazel’s hand seemed to have returned to its human form, and seeing her happy expression, her green skin tone and snout were quickly vanishing too, as she continued, “Just take it easy-peasy, my little lemon squeezy, ‘cause you’re with me…”

The two continued the lullaby contentedly as they walked through the doorway to the next carriage. This time, Hazel barely noticed the loud noises of the train’s machinery, just focusing on Amelia’s company.


End file.
